hail the king

Why I cry

Anna

10 minutes into a life drawing done in pencil.

iPad painting: petals

A still-life made on the iPad. Tarragon was thinking about the great 20th century master Giorgio Morandi, who made a career of painting identical objects (vases, of course) with subtle differences of values and tones.

What attracts the artist in paintings of this sort is the challenge of maintaining interest while minimizing contrast and variety. This is harder than it sounds. So many paintings rely on contrast - on sharp light and dark, or vivid colours - to catch the eye.

quick sketches of Rachel

Madeleine

Blustery Day

Tarragon's oil sketch of a farm in the lee of the Hog's Back. It's in the vicinity of Compton again, like so many of his landscapes.

James at the window

One of those images that calls for a poem, or maybe a short story by Paul Bowles.

I'm your biggest fan

warm up sketches

Warming up with quick sketches is traditional. Delacroix would spend a few hours with random oil sketches before touching his easel paintings.

The Toronto drawing group The Collective always begins with five one minute sketches. Here are a few of them:

Three quick drawings done with a brush ben.

A professor of Ottonian manuscripts pays close attention.

Appropriation and desire

Danielle went to Egypt and all she got was this galabiya:

The intricacies of fashion are a never-source of delight for me. I could happily draw different outfits all day long. It helps, too, that fashion is such a responsibility-free business. An individual can own a design, but a culture has no property beyond that which people concede to it. And as a general rule, fashion never concedes anything.

This has its downsides. Had the t-shirt remained a culturally specific garment, people all around the world would be dressed better. Or at least more interestingly. As it is, half the outfits in Athens, Georgia, are as boring as in Athens, Greece. Luckily, the other half provides more than enough subjects for me to draw.

Travis

A fine coat

A drawing done from life with a china marker.

Reinisa

A pensive moment for our model.

This was drawn in around fifteen minutes, with various markers.

Mirza and his hat

Joel

landscape sketch

Done with gouache on tracing paper in just a few minutes. It was one of those days when you set out full of resolve, only to have it fall away from you before you're halfway there. Wherever there happens to be. In this case it was the eastern extremities of Florence.

When you go sketching, honour demands a sketch. This is what I got that day:

Courtney on the couch

I left out the couch.